It began as an idea that has now spanned the globe celebrating the importance of discovery with an innovative approach to play and learning through stimulating, interactive and highly innovative kids’ products.
Over a decade ago, a group of designers with an entrepreneurial spirit had the idea that the world needed an entirely innovative approach to celebrating discovery via play and learning through stimulating, interactive and innovative toys in categories that were still relatively untouched. One of those categories were bath toys.
Their research demonstrated that the bath toy category was virtually untouched commercially and consisted mainly of simple squirting toys, boats, or yellow ducks but nothing innovative or thoughtful in terms of design. Research uncovered that bath time stimulated babies’ senses and development, backing the importance for opportunities to learn in the bath. Osnat Feingold, Head of Marketing Communications for Yookidoo shares, “Yookidoo identified this an important uncontested market and knew that if they worked hard and designed innovative toys for the bath it would create a leap in value for the brand that they set out to build.”
The Yookidoo brand evolved from a design studio eager to create for this market. Feingold shares, “This group of talented entrepreneurs wanted to build a brand that would represent their spirit and personality and build it from scratch! They started exploring the fields and categories that interested them and that they’d have a good chance to succeed in.”
They set to create colorful and unique bath toys that stimulated the senses of the child but also helped to build all STEM skills in addition to fine motor development, counting, color identification, cause and effect, and many more. Each child delights in the fun of the toys but is learning at the same time which is exactly what Yookidoo’s goal had been. Feingold says, “Our brand stems from the design studio repeatedly launching unique developmental toys that not only created new product categories but became instant best sellers worldwide. Yookidoo’s baby toys are all about fun, entertainment, exploration and celebrating discovery and our bath toy line was so revolutionary that it forever changed the entire category.”
Of course, with any business starting out there were some roadblocks. Feingold shares, “When you are just starting out, being naïve is a blessing. The designers had no idea of the battles that were yet to come.” Yookidoo’s first roadblock involved the actual creation of the bath toys. “Yookidoo decided to revolutionize the whole bath toy category and develop bath toys that were motorized,” says Feingold, “motorized means that we put battery operated pumps inside the toys and inside the water and this was a tricky issue, never seen before. Batteries do not like water, but Yookidoo was determined and succeeded.” This resulted in innovative, battery-operated bath toys that create wonderful and unique water effects, sounds and music.
Their second roadblock, which remains an uphill struggle this day, is because their bath toys are so popular, many have tried to imitate and produce counterfeits. This is a major issue as the cheap counterfeits are not manufactured according to world safety standards and they also stop working very quickly, leaving consumers upset while harming their brand reputation. They’ve recently started using a platform that detects online infringements and have sent cease and desist letters from their legal department.
These issues sometimes happen, and Feingold doesn’t want others embarking on their own businesses to be discouraged instead she shares, “Be persistent, take your love and passion and make it your everyday life and START NOW. Invest from day one, even if you’re short on cash, to protect your Intellectual Property because in the future the Intellectual Property will protect your brand.”
Feingold says, “In the years since Yookidoo started, our products have taken us far beyond anything we had ever imagined. They’ve taken us to more than 50 countries around the globe and introduced us to millions of homes, parents and children that, like us, are eager to discover, explore and have fun. The brand continues to grow. Every 31 seconds, a Yookidoo product is sold somewhere in the world!”
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